Exclusive: Al Snow on Mick Foley, Head, Marty Jannetty, WWE, and wrestling in the Mississippi River

Head was a huge part of Snow's career

And there's a lot of people out there now who say wrestling is running out of characters... I'll reword this from the way I initially wrote it down, which was "If you could give anyone Head, who would it be?" Bray Wyatt now uses some puppets, Head was a huge part of your career - do you think any other wrestler out there could use something like Head to propel them to that next level?

Well, lots of people tried at that time to recreate it, even back then. There was the stickhorse, the mop... There was a guy I'd heard about who was coming to the ring with a loaf of bread at one point. They say the sincerest form of flattery is imitation, and it quite honestly is, but it was never about the object.

The reason that I think that it worked was it was quite honestly about that connection, that feeling that people thought I was legitimately insane. They did.

If you were to have asked ten people, nine out of ten people would tell you that they really thought I was crazy. Not just in action, but just my behaviour. My belief as far as being insane, I think if you were truly, actually, medically insane, it's not that you walk around acting insane, some people do and it's a little more obvious, but that's not what makes you insane, it's that your version of reality is completely different from everyone else's view of reality.

Does that make you insane? I don't think, personally, that it necessarily does. Just because you have a different viewpoint of reality doesn't mean you're insane. Of course, the general public might think you're insane.

People would come up and ask me, "Hey, why do you talk to this head?" I'd reply, "Well, it's rude not to talk to someone when they talk to you." They say, "That head really talks to you?!"

And I'd reply, "Let me ask you something, do you believe in God?" They'd say, "Yes," and I'd say, "Do you talk to God?" Yeah." "Does he talk to you?" "Yeah." And I'd go, "Well, I can't hear him talk to you, does that mean you're crazy?!" And that'd make them question the legitimacy, and they would have to wonder, "Well, maybe he's right," and it gave them pause.

I think that belief, holding that belief to the point where it was who I was, that helps people connect, and the head was so instrumental because people could describe me to their friends, who weren't wrestling fans, who I was - and that was the key! They'd say, "Watch this show, there's a guy who's a lunatic that talks to a head, it's real and he does all these crazy things." Now, if you turn it on, you know exactly who I am whether you've seen me before or not.

That makes all the difference. You can be the best wrestler in the world, but if they can't describe you in ten words of less, you should just give up. That was the thing I'd been missing for years. People would say I was so good and the best kept secret in wrestling. The reason the secret was kept was because no-one could describe me to their friends. Once you find that, you're on the right path.

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A huge thanks to Al Snow for speaking to me.

You can follow Al on Twitter here, check out the Al Snow Wrestling Academy here, check out OVW here, and order his book, Self Help, here.